The lunch order at Lucy's El Adobe on Melrose in Los Angeles was as follows:

Cesar Rosas: steak picado with corn tortillas.

David Hidalgo: chile relleno, with a beef taco dorado a la carte.

Louie Perez: vegetarian burrito.

Conrad Lozano: steak picado, but could he have flour tortillas instead of corn please?

The waiter, originally from Tijuana, knew he'd been handed a setup line. "No flour here!" he barked at Lozano. "Only Mexican people here!"

The Los Lobos bassist and his bandmates broke up laughing. "I'm Mexican American!" Lozano mock-protested. "Oh, and can I get a chile relleno on the side?"

When Los Lobos began playing together four decades ago as hirsute kids in flannel shirts and blue jeans, "Mexican American" wasn't exactly the musical flavor of the month. And in those early days, what the band often got on the side was puzzlement, from both Chicanos and non-Latinos.

Were they a Mexican folk troupe that happened to play electric instruments? Or a brown-eyed, soul-blues-rock outfit that, somewhat suspiciously, sang in Spanish?

Things change. This year, Los Lobos marks its 40th anniversary as pioneering border fusionists, multiple Grammy winners and one of the two most influential Chicano musical acts in history, along with Ritchie Valens.

Their impact hasn't been measured in chart hits, but in artistic connections forged and possibilities unlocked. Every bilingual L.A. band that has come since, from Quetzal and Ozomatli to La Santa Cecilia, has built on the foundations Los Lobos laid down with landmark recordings such as "La Pistola y El Corazon," its 1988 release of neo-traditional Mexican songs, and "Kiko," its 1992 experimental masterpiece, which the Wall Street Journal likened to "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band."

Now the band is on tour, including a Tuesday stop at The Egg in Albany.

Over lunch, though, the bandmates didn't speak about anniversary accolades. Instead, expressions of gratitude coupled with mild incredulity was the conversation's main course.

Like the Rolling Stones or the Dead, Los Lobos prospered by keeping faith with blues-based rock, while simultaneously venturing down musical Americana's less-traveled byways.

Ironically, the band's most intense creative crisis came after it hit No. 1 in 1987 with a cover of Valens' 1958 "La Bamba." Although it was propelled to momentary stardom, the band quickly came to fear that it would end up typecast as a retro-oldies group.